Our transfers are average. I don’t expect much improvement adjusted for the relative weakness of our upcoming schedule.
Which is not common for ND
I like what the new AD is saying but I don’t see a lot of reason for near-term optimism, nor do I think the current Wild West version of college football suits ND.
ND can now recruit players it couldn’t before
ND can now fill gaps with transfers that it couldn’t before
ND is now paying top dollar to get two top ten coordinators
ND will now have top levels facilities
ND will likely get what it needs to compete
Whether that adds up to Optimism is up to you.
Whether you like the wild west or not, is up to you.
It’s certainly a more level playing field. You may not like the field or rules, but that’s a different question.
We have the Gug and that new indoor space, where are we lacking?
Wake me up when we win a game that matters.
some of this has just been implemented?
We got some nice players to plug holes last year (the DB from OSU may have been the best) but so did everyone else. Hartman was good and we probably would’ve been worse off without him, but we didn’t accomplish much at the end of the day. We have some QBs coming in that could make a difference in a couple of years, but that’s quite uncertain at this point. Nothing about the incoming team suggests to me that the results will be different next year.
Or I should say, they take a few years to manifest results.
I’m not saying we’re guaranteed to be a better team moving forward, but most of what he listed are things that take 2-3+ years to see results from, and some of them just happened in the last year or two.
You’re fixating on the transfers thing which was one of eight points. I won’t speak for SEE, but I’m pretty sure his whole point was “the next five years could see ND rise to the elite”, not “next year ND will be a national title contender”.
That’s the facilities - which we all know is nice but only complements a great program. The rest of his points have been true for a couple of seasons and I’ve seen nothing to suggest ND is closing the gap with the best teams.
- This offseason we beat out Texas A&M and others and paid the highest OC salary in CFB to (ostensibly) upgrade our offense
- Freeman’s first real recruiting class as head coach isn’t even upper class yet
- Our new AD who promises to take greater strides towards a national championship just started the job a couple weeks ago
- Pay-for-play NIL just became legal a month ago, something other schools were doing illegally for a couple years while we obeyed the rules
- Freeman’s team culture and increasing talent level take more than a year or two to bear fruit
Again, these are largely changes that don’t show overnight. The point isn’t that ND *will* win a title in the next few years, it is that the road is being paved to get the program to a point where the opportunity to win a title will be more achievable than it has been in decades.
If Freeman doesn’t succeed at ND, it will be his fault and the excuses will be slim.
to say can't really be backed up by facts or empirical data. But one change I have seen (usually) is that the Freeman teams don't seem to have that "deer-in-headlights" look for big games that we often saw with Kelly (although I'll admit Freeman has had that look a few times). I despise moral victories, and thought Freeman and crew did a shitty job during the end of the Ohio State game, but that was a huge game, at night, on national television, and with a few exceptions those were the types of games for which Kelly would come out and not have the team prepared. We'd go down a score or two, and Kelly would panic and scrap whatever shit gameplan he put together, and the results would be an even worse loss. That didn't happen with OSU or USC, we came out and had a solid gameplan that we stuck to until we blew the ending with boneheaded coaching moves. But I never felt that the team looked unprepared or didn't belong in the game, which was a feeling I had often with Kelly. Maybe previews of that cultural shift, but still more to prove.
Again, pelt me with empties because this is one of the more fluffy posts I usually try to avoid making, but at least a feeling I got last year.
Mediocrity. ND hasn t been committed to winning. They’ve chosen half solutions. Everyone knows when you choose half solutions. You can’t win with conflicted commitment.
I doubt we’ll get #1 classes, but we’ll be able to compete for players we couldn’t touch before.
Being able to plug in transfers is a huge win. ND will always have more holes to fill.
Top coordinators is really important with a green HC.
The facilities matter from a time management and nutrition perspective. Many players now eat fast food. You can’t win that way.
Most importantly as changes evolve, ND can be a leader vs the reluctant follower always two steps behind.
Whether it should be playing in the Wild West is different question.
I can see arguments both ways. Half assing it, as ND has done since Holtz, is the worst choice.
Most alumni understand that it is not a good idea to segregate the football ayers from the student body - living quarters, classes, or mealtime. We saw what happened when we segregated the football team for "study hall" witha dedicated "football tutor". Nice idea, Kelly. Nice accountability, Saucy and Jenkins.
We can provide the football players with the appropriate food in the north and south dining halls.
We have no hard information that Denbrock is the highest paid OC. We do know he is a crony. I don't think that ND said no to Ludwog, the he previous mediocrity from that golden tablet state. Swabrick just stepped on his crank. I think out staff is middling. We shall see. Regardless, it is the one that will make or break Freeman. He will have do dance with it. Freeman. I am not as sanguine as some. I wish Freeman had made different moves and hires. This will be Kellyball without JD Daniels. Whatever the defense throws UT us, the adjustment will be to pass more, out of the shotgun only. The running game will have the same 2 or 3 plays, mostly inside zone.
I think out talent is just fine. Not sure who our first team All Alericsns are at Rb, WR or QB.
There are reasons ND has disfavored football transfers for decades. Those reasons still exist.
ND has traditionally made a half-assed commitment to football excellence.
amusing. Pete burns more calories in 5 minutes than John does the whole concert.
I'll judge by their actions.
I'd love to see Freeman succeed.
he handled the Andy Ludwig situation. Quite the opposite. That said, I suspect green-lighting the required money to hire Denbrock may have been Swarbrick's own attempt to cover his tracks on the way out.
I don't think it's a stretch to believe that the Denbrock hire will make or break Freeman's tenure.
Was mot the right guy to be our OC. I think he was using the ND situation to get a better deal at Utah. It’s easy to think ND screwed-up but none of us really know the truth as to what happened.
We can speculate but that’s not fair to Freeman, Ludwig or Swarbrick. If we had Ludwig we miss out on Denbrock.
screwed the hire up, evidently because of a mistake by one of his subordinates whom I won't name (but you can find it if you look). Not even the homer beat writers tried to assert otherwise. At best, you'd see euphemisms like "confusing" or "puzzling" or "unfortunate," and the like. Simple as that. It was keystone cops all the way down.
And the Denbrock hire, whether good or bad, and I'm ambivalent at best, does not address my response to SEE, which is that last year Swarbrick did NOT meaningfully support Freeman when Freeman needed it. That point is wholly independent of whether Ludwig would have been better or worse than Denbrock.
whitewash what he did re Ludwig.
And they are likely the most important these days.
On point one, for starters, I don't think there's any reliable support for the position that pre-NIL players were paid in significant amounts that made other offers clearly more desirable than NDs. And while ND players do fine in NIL, it's not clear that's an even playing field. Early signs were that ND was being beaten out in NIL against other elite schools. All information on this topic if murky. But I certainly haven't seen evidence that makes me confident ND is on an even playing field with the elite teams that are the only comparison that matters. The best evidence this is the case is that despite a greater staff commitment to recruiting from the top down and despite initially having elite classes when Freeman was signed, ND's recruiting classes took a hit when NIL opened up. ND was unable to sign verbal commitments from the kind of guys that Kelly could never get verbal commitments from in the first place. The result is that, despite great initial enthusiasm on the recruiting trail from Freeman, his classes are not much different from the bulk of Kelly's. And now there is no longer an upward trend for future classes. Unlike Freeman's first couple classes that were great early and then lost his five stars, his next class is notably worse than the past couple and is only relying on raw numbers for its early ranking. If that class closes like the last couple classes closed, it will likely drop out of the Top Ten.
ND is still likely at a disadvantage with transfers because it has more restrictions than others in bringing in players. In a grad transfer only world, that rule helped level the playing field for ND. But in an undergrad free transfer world, ND can't bring in the numbers that other teams can in order to fill gaps as efficiently. Undergrad business majors cannot transfer in and expect to be on track to graduate, greatly limiting the pool.
I don't disagree with the other points. But I don't find them particularly instructive. There was great institutional commitment to ensure Kelly succeeded. Yet he didn't.
I don't think anyone should take the position that ND can't win a title. But I see no evidence that ND is structurally better positioned to do so now.
> Every year ND lost recruits to the bag man. If you follow ISD or others, you’d know it’s common.
> Compare transfers before Freeman to after Freeman. If you can find a comparison for what they brought in this year I’ll be all ears. They brought in the #1 transfer QB, the #1 RDE, the top WR from Clemson. I don’t think it’s close at all.
To be able to plug in a QB, a JJB an Oben and a nickel into a team as transfers is a luxury no previous coach has had. I think the transfers on this team outnumbers the seniors who made it to four years from at least one previous class.
And I should mention that ND is expanding numbers and exiting players as well.
influx. You are not looking at how much other schools have increased transfer influx. Other schools are bringing in more kids than ND is to fill gaps. And ND has challenges compared to those schools to be able to fill in the slots that are opening up. ND will likely bring in larger freshman classes compared to those schools as a result, which will put an onus on development and retention--the latter part being more difficult these days.
I'm not saying that bag men never happened. But there's little reason to think that was a greater structural challenge than it was in the 80s. It was largely a bogeyman for people who refused to hold the head coach accountable for working harder at recruiting.
as if that's a good thing?
In other words, you're claiming that now ND is no different.
As for running guys off, ND does not revoke anyone's scholarship. Some kids will leave to seek playing time elsewhere but all have the option to stay.
Coaches at other schools who hold similar periodic conversations with players regarding playing time and their position on the depth chart don't always offer that option. While others (Andy) may disagree, I think that difference still has some significance.
Allowing a guy who isn't going to cut it on the football field to stay around and focus on academics and get a degree is hugely important. I'd argue it's the most important part of the scholarship offer.
Was funny.
(and I get the animosity towards Weis, but I have met the guy on a number of occasions and like the guy) Willingham will stand out as the absolute worst HC of ND in my lifetime. That includes Faust who at least recruited quite well and brought in talent.
Willingham almost looks like a saboteur. Kelly is easily the biggest delta bravo of my lifetime, but Willingham was the worst HC. He never gave a shit about ND and it was apparent in his recruiting effort and results.
coach if he had not stayed with the Patriots through the Super Bowl in Feb. 2005? Would it have made a difference in his coaching staff? Or what if David Cutcliff did not have to have heart surgery and was able to coach quarterbacks from the beginning? Or if he decided not to install a new offense in fall camp going into 2007 and stuck with Sharpley as QB, and let Clausen progress as a back-up, learning the offense, etc? For all his arrogance and Jersey attitude, Weis was a very smart guy who knew what he was doing. We saw how well it went in 2005 (for the most part) with the players he inherited from Willingham (who frankly couldn't do anything with them). He maybe could have been a great coach had a few things started differently.
Are you talking about same guy who lost to pathetic teams like Uconn, 'Cuse, Navy
Willingham ultimately doomed him. In 2007, we had 18-19 year olds playing against 22 year olds from other teams. His attempts to mask this with his schemes certainly didn’t help.
Weis is/was an OC...not a HC. He so badly wanted to be Parcells, but there is only one of him.
Weis just didn't know how to coach an entire team. I will say this...he was as unlucky as Kelly was lucky with regards to USC. Kelly got such a free pass for his record but the schedule was so watered down ALONG with the fact that USC was down during his tenure. Weis was 0-5...and a few of the games weren't even close
Behind the scenes of his highly ranked 2005 and 2006 seasons, there was very little player development going on. The highly rated Feb 2006 recruiting class didn't amount to jack diddly poo and got pushed around on both lines of scrimmage by the likes of UConn at the end of their senior year. I don't think anyone from that recruiting class got drafted higher than 6th round as I recall.
experimentation with the offense and Demetrius Jones was just foolish. Weis should stuck with Sharpley and the original offense for at least the first half of 2007. After six games, maybe you give Claussen a shot, rather than throwing him to the wolves in AnnArbor week 2.
my encounters with him and especially as to my kids, even though he once kiddingly told them "Okay, now get lost" after taking a picture with them. He and they laughed at that.
He seemed to almost have multiple personalities. There were situations where he was so nice and so kind, others where he was so unnecessarily abrasive and ungracious (bizarrely so).
What Charlie Weis did was work his ass off to restore Notre Dame as a relevant team on the national recruiting scene. I realize he turned out to be a failure as a coach, but he restored the belief we could recruit elite players (perception and reality). All you have to do is look who Ty beat out for his best recruits. Toledo, Ball State, BC, etc. Darius Walker was considered a colossal win—he was a 3-star!
I have no ill will toward him. He pulled us from the absolute gutter even if he was clearly incapable of doing more than that.
because he reminds me of Private Pyle from "Full Metal Jacket" and this scene always makes me laugh.
We're finally catching up
I thought ND's facilities were already quite good. I suppose the Gug is getting a bit aged (hard to believe it was completed almost 20 years ago at this point), but we have also since installed an separate indoor football field facility (do they even use the football field that was around the indoor track anymore, or did that get transitioned over after the new indoor football field?).
What does ND Football need that they don't have already to be top tier?
I may be completely ignorant on this topic, because I don't know what any other schools have in terms of facilities.
Seems to be more focused on nutrition facilities, dining areas, meeting rooms, office space, etc.
ND isn't close to the top ten in facilities right now. Take a look at Clemson, LSU, Oregon, Texas A&M, Georgia, Ohio State, and more. Their setups make the Gug look antiquated.
I'm not saying it's a good thing- I hate this rat race and spending spree, but it's the sad reality of modern CFB.
I don't understand the capital waste spent on making sure the facilities are "top tier". It's an arms race that makes the cold war look tame.
Same with coach pay and athletic dept. staff/overhead.
I'm kind of shocked schools are moving forward with significant facility spends for sports, although I suppose donors prefer their names on tangible buildings.
It seems like everyone adjusts to sad realities pretty quickly
I would’ve thought NIL was the last straw
IF there is ever a plan that is collectively bargained and that shares revenues with college football players at the elite level, wouldn't that organically bring expenditures on facilities and coach salaries down to a "reasonable" level? It feels like the money in the sport is wasted now on a game of one-upping on facilities, coach salaries, staffing, and recruiting. And sadly not on the best and safest playing surfaces in stadiums.
There was a recent article that I think Dennis Dodd had a major school AD mentioning his departmental budget was like a crime scene due to player payroll/NIL taking a bite.
The bite is going to get a whole lot bigger with House vs NCAA, etc. coming up in 9 months.
directly paying players out of his athletic budget, presumably under the guise of "NIL"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens just like the $100 handshake used to happen, but I'm pretty surprised an AD would brazenly admit that he's doing it to a writer.
the House case ruling going against them and future anticipated player payroll expenses. My initial post was not an accurate recollection of the article - here's a snippet:
"One Power Five athletic director recently winced after taking a glimpse at his balance sheet. His financial outlook is not much different than his peers' with multiple high-speed bullet trains all coming into the station at the same time. The most unpredictable of all being expected revenue sharing with athletes through collective bargaining.
"It feels like my budget is about to look like a murder scene," that AD said.
Those projections -- typically called pro forma budgets -- are based on "what if?" hypotheticals. Like any good business person, an AD attempts to determine what expenditures are ahead and how much revenue will be coming in. Right now, they are struggling to project either."
I don't follow recruiting closely. We are in Year 3 with Freeman. How much better is recruiting under Freeman as compared to recruiting under Kelly? It seems better but I am not sure how much better.
There were some good posts by Moff and others about the recruiting prowess of Vinny Cerrato, but as I recall, Holtz was easily our best recruiter on his staff at the time and was considered among the best in the country, particularly when he got into a recruit's home. Is Freeman near that level?
Thank you.
SEE is correct in that the transfer portal has helped, but those spots must be recruited as well.
This year's team is loaded with talent and depth. It will go as far as the offensive line will allow.
One measure of recruiting is at quarterback. With CJ Carr in 2024, Deuce Knight in 2025 and either Brady Hart or Noah Grubbs in 2026, ND is in a great spot.
Another measure is the number of five star players. Freeman is not there yet. The SEC still dominates that area along with Ohio State. The question is whether we can win a championship with only modest success in this area.
I'd like to think it's possible. You need good coaching, chemistry, leadership and a quarterback. ND has all those things. I'm reminded of what Nick Saban, the king of five star recruiting, said in discussing his retirement. His wife asked him, "Why are we still doing this?". The question was prompted by the fact that five star players and recruits were less interested in how they were going to be developed than how much they were going to get paid.
Sure, Notre Dame has a good NIL program to compensate its players, but money is not the primary reason recruits come to South Bend. The best players aren't going to leave for a bigger payday. That's why Freeman should be able to build cohesive and competitive teams. The only area where the lack of five star players could hold him back (now that QB is fixed) is along the defensive line. Outstanding pass rushers and interior wrecking balls are one element that may always be lacking. This year we're using a deep rotation of high energy guys, but there are no NFL first rounders in that mix.
We are doing a better job with the top 50-250, but we're still woefully behind on getting the truly elite recruits. Our best bet at this rate is to hope we can build a program like Michigan did. We certainly won't be able to go the Bama/OSU/Georgia route unless something changes.
I know you were making a point about talent, but their season should never be used as any sort of an example to be emulated.
Harbaugh is a cheat and a coward. He was suspended for 6 games, 3 games self-imposed by Michigan and 3 more by the conference. He bolted for the NFL to avoid further investigation. Their achievements are forever tainted and should forever be framed in that context.
No more will a team like UM get to play 2 real teams all year long and then get piss lucky to dodge the acknowledged most talented team because they lost 1 game and fell out of the CFP.
The future is bright
operating smoothly.